He found Mr. Hardie seated garbling his accounts with surpassing dignity. The great man handed him an envelope, and cooked majestic on. A wave of that imperial hand, and Skinner had mingled with the past.
For know that the envelope contained three things: a cheque for a month's wages; a character; and a dismissal, very polite and equally peremptory.
Skinner stood paralysed: the complacency died out of his face, and rueful wonder came instead. It was some time before he could utter a word: at last he faltered, “Turn me away, sir? turn away Noah Skinner? Your father would never have said such a word to my father.” Skinner uttered this his first remonstrance in a voice trembling with awe, but gathered courage when he found he had done it, yet lived.
Mr. Hardie evaded his expostulation by a very simple means: he made no reply, but continued his work, dignified as Brutus, inexorable as Fate, cool as Cucumber.
Skinner's anger began to rise, he watched Mr. Hardie in silence, and said to himself, “Curse you! you were born without a heart!”
He waited, however, for some sign of relenting, and, hoping for it the water came into his own eyes. But Hardie was impassive as ice.
Then the little clerk, mortified to the core as well as wounded, ground his teeth and drew a little nearer to this incarnate Arithmetic, and said with an excess of obsequiousness, “Will you condescend to give me a reason for turning me away all in a moment after five-and-thirty years' faithful services?”
“Men of business do not deal in reasons,” was the cool reply: “it is enough for you that I give you an excellent character, and that we part good friends.”
“That we do not,” replied Skinner sharply: “if we stay together we are friends; but we part enemies, if we do part.”
“As you please, Mr. Skinner. I will detain you no longer.”